Cyclone Hud Hud eyes Vizag for landfall on Sunday

Severe cyclone Hud Hud in the east-central Bay of Bengal is on course to graduate to the next level as a very severe one by Friday, says India Met Department.

It was located 700 km south-east of Gopalpur and east-southeast of Visakhapatnam at 4 pm on Thursday.

The Met has now veered down to the choice of mostly Visakhapatnam and surroundings as the landfall point. Earlier, it had earmarked an entire arc linking Visakhapatnam with Gopalpur as the impact area.

“Hud Hud” will be two full days away from landfall after it intensified into a very severe cyclone, leading models to wonder if could gather even more strength before it hits the last mile.

The overall environment tends to be favourable, with sea-surface temperatures getting warmer towards the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha coasts on Thursday.

An assessment by the US Navy Coupled Ocean Data Assimilation showed that seawaters along these had warmed up to beyond the 30-deg Celsius mark.

The threshold temperature to sustain a storm in the ocean is 28.5 deg Celsius, which is what obtains mostly over the rest of the Bay of Bengal basin.

According to the US Joint Typhoon Warning Centre, the vertical wind shear (change in speed and direction of wind with height) continues to be moderate (31 km/hr), which aids the development of the storm.

High values of vertical wind shear can unsettle the storm tower that rises 10- to 12 km into the atmosphere. High wind shear can significantly impact storm strength and intensity, even leading to premature death.

But “Hud Hud” is additionally blessed with good outflow on the top, called the window effect, which allows the storm to breathe and sustain itself.

The US Centre had warned that wind speeds could pace up to 213 km/hr ahead of landfall, but has slightly lowered the peak speeds by a notch to around 203 km/hr (by Saturday).

But India Met Department is projecting much lower peak wind speeds of 130- to 140 km/h gusting to 155 km/hr.

It has warned heavy to very heavy rainfall with isolated extreme falls over Godavari, Vijayanagaram, Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam districts as well as south Odisha from Saturday evening.

Heavy to very heavy rainfall is likely over the rest of Andhra Pradesh and north coastal Odisha during this period.

Squally winds with speeds reaching 50-60 km/hr and gusting to 70 km/hr are likely off and along the north Andhra Pradesh and south Odisha coasts from Saturday morning.

The wind speeds would pace up to 130-140 km/hr gusting to 155 km/hr along and off the north Andhra Pradesh coast and up to 80-90 km/hr along south and off south Odisha coast.

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